Why the Form E was missing: “I don’t know,” Satern said. She declined to name the chair for that precinct. “It’s hard to get volunteers. Just because someone made a mistake, I don’t want them to say, ‘Well, I’m just walking away.’”

What happened that night: All 11 precincts in Emmet County were together in one building, at Estherville Lincoln Central High School. The precinct leaders brought Satern the vote count on unofficial pieces of paper. As two witnesses watched, Satern typed in the results using the party’s password-protected website. Later, the precinct leaders left their official paperwork on their individual tables, and a volunteer collected it for Satern.

Her uncle died Jan. 8, so she asked a volunteer to mail everything to party headquarters. Ten arrived in Des Moines via UPS; one didn’t. Her company makes rifle barrels; she left for an industry trade show in Las Vegas on Jan. 16, believing all paperwork was in order.

Satern said she has no idea what the vote count was for this precinct. “All my other packets have the ballots in them, but this one does not,” she said.

How to improve the caucuses: Satern suggests taking a picture of the Form E and emailing it to party officials on caucus night.

POCAHONTAS

Missing precinct: Center-South Roosevelt-North Lincoln

Vote count: Santorum 8, Perry 7, Paul 1, Romney 1, according to GOP Chairman Michael Ryan of Pocahontas. “I have the ballots,” he said. “I’m looking at them right in front of me.” They’re the same numbers the party reported on caucus night.

Why the Form E was missing: “The form did not get back to me. I had it in my hand, and I gave it to my precinct person, and it didn’t get back to me,” Ryan said. He declined to name the person. “They can’t find it. I talked to them,” he said.

What happened that night: This precinct met at the Prairie Lakes Area Education Agency building with two other precincts. Ryan oversaw the counting of all three precincts, at one table, along with volunteers Julie Storr and Renee Olson.

Representatives from the Perry and Santorum campaigns, and a reporter for the Pocahontas Record-Democrat, Jamie Whitney, watched the counting.

“I made sure when we did the counting that we were accurate,” Ryan said.

Ballots for each precinct had a different color. They were divided into piles by precinct and by candidate. A precinct secretary called in the results, Ryan said.

Whitney said he can’t verify the numbers because Ryan gave him combined totals for the three precincts.

How to improve the caucuses: “It would be nice (to have voting machines) just because the fiasco happened for me of not getting the form ,” Ryan said. He also thinks Form E should be in triplicate, and that would do the trick.

FRANKLIN

Missing precinct: Geneva-Reeve

Vote count: Paul 10, Santorum 3, Perry 3, Gingrich 2, Romney 1, according to GOP Chairwoman Karen Zander of Latimer. Those are the same numbers the party reported on caucus night.

Why the Form E was missing: It’s unclear.

Zander, who was overseeing her first caucus, said she collected the paperwork from the county’s 17 precincts in separate manila envelopes. She didn’t check to see whether each Form E was there before she mailed everything to party headquarters. “It could’ve gotten lost at the state,” she said.

But she added: “I’m sorry. I feel bad. I took responsibility for the missing paper.”

What happened that night: All the precincts met at four sites, with one chair for each site. When the votes were done, the four chairs called Zander with the numbers, and she submitted them via the party’s password-protected website. She believed her numbers were correct because the check-in paperwork showed 475 eligible voters signed in, and her vote count totaled 475, she said.

How to improve the caucuses: As for voting machines, “it would take the weight off my shoulders, but I don’t think it’s necessary,” Zander said. “There’s nothing wrong with a piece of paper. You have two or three people count it, and you report it. That’s about as honest and as quick as you can get.”

CERRO GORDO

Missing precinct: Mason City Ward 2 Precinct 3

Vote count: Paul 8, Bachmann 7, Santorum 4, Perry 2, Romney 1, according to GOP Chairman John Rowe of Mason City. Those are the same figures the party posted on caucus night.

Why the Form E was missing: “All my stuff was in order when I sent it in a sealed box with delivery confirmation,” Rowe said. “When they opened up that box in Des Moines and spread it out on the table, I can’t verify what happened down there. I would argue that when they were unstacking it out of the box, one piece of paper slid somewhere, and it’s there.”

What happened that night: Two county auditor staffers were hired to help with voter registration at sites in Mason City and Clear Lake, and they stuck around for the counting. Rowe said he still has the ballots, with each of the 26 precincts in a separate envelope, along with the unofficial tally sheets from caucus night. He personally organized all the paperwork, a 12-inch stack, and mailed it himself.

How to improve the caucuses: “It can’t be any more transparent,” Rowe said. “There’s no backroom dealings. And we take it very seriously.” But the Form Es should come with carbon copy backups, he said. “Why the Form E, which is the utmost critical one, why that’s not in triplicate is beyond me,” he said.

Why four Form Es were missing: Two were lost — the ones from the Franklin and Washington precincts, said GOP Chairman Don Lucas.

“I don’t know what happened to them,” Lucas said. Neither do the precinct chairs, he said.

“It wasn’t because we didn’t have legitimate people doing it. These are very honest people that you go to church with and go fishing with. There was no attempt at fraud or anything.”

And the Form Es from two — the missing Fort Madison ones — were turned in without any numbers on them, Lucas said.

When he discovered this after caucus night, “basically I didn’t feel it was ethically right to fill it out and have someone else sign it,” Lucas said.

He didn’t mail those two forms to state headquarters.

What happened that night: The vote counts were tallied on unofficial pieces of paper and submitted by computer to the party’s password-protected website, Lucas said.

James Creen, the precinct chair for the two Fort Madison precincts, said the secretaries left that night before the paperwork was filled out.

Members of the press and a class of political science students witnessed the counting, Creen said.

“With that many people looking over the shoulder, it would’ve been very difficult to modify any of the numbers,” he said.

Sue Dyer, a precinct secretary who was the first to notice one of the Form Es was missing, said she believes the results reported on caucus night are accurate.

“What I don’t like is how the news media is making this into some kind of a villain story and saying we were cheating. It’s like, ‘Oh my God, are you kidding me?’” she said.

How to improve the caucuses: “What other poll has a margin of error as close as what our poll came out to be?” Lucas said. “Part of the problem we had this time was the race was so close. In any system that large, there’s going to be a few mistakes with the margin of error we’re talking about. It’s unbelievably small.”